The frying of food products is an important part of a restaurant's cooking. Many restaurants have frying vats in which various types of food products are cooked. These food products might include fish fillets, chicken patties, chicken or fish strips, chicken "nuggets," french fries and other food products.
In many restaurants, particularly quick service restaurants, the time that it takes to fry products is important to customer satisfaction. One convenience of these restaurants which potential customers rely on in choosing to dine there is the belief that they could get served quickly.
The need of the quick service restaurant to be able to quickly serve food products is further exacerbated during the traditionally busy periods of lunch and dinner. It is especially during these periods that customers may have to wait in line before ordering. After waiting to place an order, the customer may become impatient if further waiting is required while their food is being cooked. If too many customers are forced to wait, the area where the orders are being taken may become congested. The ability to fry products as quickly as possible is an advantage in these situations.
Further, it may be the case that there are only one or two fryers in a particular restaurant, while there are several food products which need to be cooked in these fryers. If one food product takes a long time to cook, the cooking of other food products in that same fryer must wait until the first food product has been cooked. This could slow the entire operation of the restaurant and further contribute to delays in serving customers.
One alternative would be to fry well in advance a quantity of food products. This way, when a customer needs to be served, these food products have been prepared beforehand, and the customer is served quickly. One disadvantage of this alternative is that quality and appearance of cooked food decreases upon aging. Another disadvantage is that it is difficult to anticipate what foods need to be prepared well in advance of ordering. Such advance preparation of food products may also be logistically impractical.
Current trends also point toward nutrition considerations when a customer chooses a quick service restaurant. Reduced frying time means a reduction in shortening or oil uptake. Fat and calorie levels of the products are therefore lowered.
Finally, it is also important for customer satisfaction to cook food so that consistent and high quality is obtained from one batch to the next as well as throughout each product in the batch.
Various types of fry baskets are known. U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,071 to Kroll discloses a fry basket having a plurality of pouches for frying pies and fish filets. The Kroll fry basket was partially constructed with lightweight, low heat capacity material to decrease heat absorption by the fry basket from the oil. U.S. Pat. No. 4,542,684 to Cantrell discloses a fry basket designed to maintain the food products being cooked in a separated condition. The Cantrell fry basket has a wire rod insert having at least one elongate longitudinal support member rod, a plurality of transverse support member rods and a plurality of elongate separator rods that extend downwardly from each transverse support member.
Currently, chicken nuggets and other smaller food products are fried in a standard fry basket constructed of wire mesh with screen-like sloping side walls, a flat bottom and a handle at one end of the basket that extends above the top edge of the basket. The food products are simply dumped into the fry basket and fried and more or less randomly oriented.
A need exists for an apparatus that reduces the time required to fry food products.
A need exists for an apparatus that consistently fries food to more uniform quality, compared to food fried while essentially randomly oriented, and is suitable for commercial use in quick service restaurants.
A need also exists for an apparatus that reduces the amount of fat contained in foods, compared to food fried while essentially randomly oriented. When food products are fried, some cooking oil is absorbed by the food products. Providing a method and apparatus whereby less oil is absorbed by the food products during frying would be advantageous.